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By: Blake Hiemstra You may listen to this devotion in audio form via podcast here.
So Baruch read it to them. When they heard all these words, they looked at each other in fear and said to Baruch, “We must report all these words to the king.” Then they asked Baruch, “Tell us, how did you come to write all this? Did Jeremiah dictate it?”
“Yes,” Baruch replied, “he dictated all these words to me, and I wrote them in ink on the scroll.”
-Jeremiah 36:15-18
If we needed a Biblical narrative to set in the plush and proper milieu of turn-of-the-century England, with its elegant teapots, formal dining rooms, sumptuous visual and . . . tepid (or perhaps nuanced) action, today’s passage might be the pick. In contrast to the swashbuckling sagas on the high seas, filled with mutiny and sword-fighting and plank-walking, this Downton Abbey-like passage in Jeremiah 36 features the following scintillating action:
-One guys dictates.
-Second guy writes it down.
-Second guy then reads it from the rooftops of the temple.
-Third guy hears it, and goes and tells his buddies, decides to bring second guy in for a second reading.
-Second guy comes in to read to the buddies.
-The buddies decide to read it to the king.
-The king hears it, throws it in the fire, and just to bring things full-circle, wants to kill first and second guy.
When Reading and Writing play the central roles in a narrative, it’s the equivalent of having a face only a mother can love. It’s a story that only an English teacher can cherish.
And yet, when we take a step back and see the big picture, maybe this is a story gripping enough to make us weak in the knees.
As all great stories do, it starts with God. A great God. One so rich in mercy that he wants to spare his people destruction and harm. A God who speaks the potent words foretelling doom in blatant, compassionate-driven hope that his people will listen and repent.
It features the inspiring faithfulness of a beleaguered prophet, who in the face of ambivalence and persecution, still dedicates himself to the Lord, being able to hear his voice and speak the words God puts on his heart, no matter if voicing them might make him a wanted man.
There are also folks moved by the words of the Lord. Micaiah and his fellow cabinet members hear the words written on the scroll and immediately know that this is serious. They know that they need to tell the king. Perhaps their reaction is prescriptive for us. True, genuine encounters with the word of the Lord prompt a response. Sometimes the truth of God’s word intersects with an unhealthy pattern of sin in our lives and causes us deep remorse and repentance. Sometimes scripture finds a home in the midst of our unspeakable hurt, provoking tears of peace and gratitude. No matter what, God’s word prompts a response in the hearts of believers, unlike the final player in this drama . . .
We have an arrogant king, so unmoved and so resolute in his hardened ways that he scoffs at any foretelling of doom and makes a defiant show of ripping and burning the scroll containing God’s word. Though surely we wouldn’t tear out pages of our Bibles and throw them in the incinerator, I wonder if we sometimes mirror Jehoiakim’s bravado and confidence in our own abilities, sitting on the throne of our own lives while relegating God, and his word, to a position of less importance.
And in that case, I wonder if the judgment and the wrath that Jeremiah foretold was not just a warning for the Judah and Israel, but actually for us. And perhaps this judgment only highlights our desperate need for a Savior and points us, thankfully, to Jesus.
So maybe there’s much more to this story than a Yorkshire drawing-room poetry reading.